Join us in reading the September Co-op Good Food Book Club book, The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet(2014) by Kristin Ohlson.The Book Club will meetSunday, September 28, from 7:00-8:30 at a member’s private residence to discuss The Soil Will Save Us. Email bookclub@moscowfood.coop for more information and directions.

What is the most singular and unique thing about the Palouse Region? One could rightfully argue….it is our soil. The Palouse fields and hills hide a remarkable substratum; Palouse soils are deeper than Olympic diving pools. And they’re among the richest, most generative soils in the world. Our deep dirt derives from a violent history of massive ice dam breaches, repeated over thousands of years during the last ice age. Known as The Missoula Floods, these herculean deluges dumped immense masses of soil right here beneath us as the waters from behind the colossal ice age dams crashed out across the landscape in unimaginably huge torrents.

These soils quite literally make the Palouse the Palouse. They make our region unique and special from its very core. There could be no better choice, then, for this month’s “Unique to the Palouse” theme, than the brand-new book The Soil Will Save Us. Here best-selling author and award-winning science writer Kristin Ohslon threads together the best of what our book club has pondered so far this year. Linking ideas from books like Cows Save the Planet, Whole, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, her thesis is at once familiar but also breakthrough: She takes us to the heart of the matter. Next to the sun, soil is the core, the root, the generative well-spring of all life on Earth. It has the capacity to heal what ails our planet. And for thousands of years, humans knew it. Today, Ohlson reminds us, it’s time to remember.

From Rodale: “Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world’s soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for ‘our great green hope’—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming.”

Her book “…will inspire everyone to rethink the potential of the ground beneath their feet, as well as the landscapes around them, and to figure out how they can make a difference.”

Please join us to discuss The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet(Rodale 2014) by Kristin Ohlson on Sunday, September 28 from 7:00-8:30 pm. Remember to email bookclub@moscowfood.coop for the meeting location and directions and/or to receive email reminders about the Good Food Book Club. The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson is available through your local library. If you are interested in buying the book, check out the area’s local used book stores or visit Book People of Moscow where Book Club members receive a discount. For more information about the Good Food Book Club click here.